2 hours ago, Paul Fink said:Isn't that a Texan thing?
Grits is a SOUTHERN thing, so yes to Texas but if you want to get into deep grits country, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and the next tier up are the heaviest consumers. Western Kentucky, where I was born and raised, was a major grits producer.
And it IS different from corn meal.
White dried corn (mostly white) was soaked in lye water - a tricky process - then washed and dried in "shaker" pans over a very low fire. These were rectangular "pans" about 6 inches deep and as I recall, about 3' wide and 4' long, hung on chains so they could be raised and lowered and shaken to agitate the hominy kernels. When dry, it was bagged in 50 pound burlap bags that were sold as is if people wanted to cook whole hominy, or some people would buy a bag and have it ground at the grist mill into grits, fine, medium or coarse, and then it was bagged in cloth bags.
That was the stuff that was cooked with water and salt to make the breakfast staple.
So now you know that when people tell you that cornmeal and polenta and grits are all the same, you can tell them that is not so.
